


girls night

by nanasalt



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: .... yet, But sadly no Pillow Fight, Gen, Girls' Night!, My otp is Anya/Found Family, Tags and such may change if I get around to writing the rest of this concept but for now, Talking About Boys!, Women Should Unionize, imagine Anya having friends!, with other women!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29575266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanasalt/pseuds/nanasalt
Summary: Anya doesn't manage to find the conman who can sell her exit papers. Instead, she finds three women who, she discovers, are still very annoyed at him.Or, how Anya learned to stop running and take a breath.
Kudos: 6





	girls night

The three women catch her outside the palace and scoff and twist like ribbons in the breeze - or like bits of trash, but Anya’s a dreamer - and tell her auditions are over. If she wanted Dmitry, she’s just missed him.

“Oh,” Anya says. She doesn’t have much of a plan now, except to find the mysterious conman again and get her papers, but Dmitry is hard to hunt down.

“I suppose you’d make a good Anastasia,” the brunette sniffs, and Anya stares at her in confusion until she adds, “that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

Anya explains the whole story - amnesia, Paris, the need for papers - and they cluck sympathetically and say Dmitry’s a bastard anyway - a handsome one, they mostly agree, but a bastard who’d have fleeced this rural refugee in a heartbeat.

“Better you dodged that,” one woman says, and Anya nods uncertainly as she passes the broom to her other hand. They notice and question and Anya finds herself explaining for the second time of the day that she needs this job, because jobs are hard to find in the new Russia and she takes what she can get, living on the streets.

“You have no idea,” the brunette says with a laugh, “if you’ve only fallen to sweeping.”

The blonde smacks her arm in reprimand but the redhead gives Anya a calculating look.

They need a roommate, she tells Anya. The building they live in is owned by an old woman who is very strict and doesn’t take to the women’s scattered work, inconsistent income, and choice of company. The last is accompanied by an eyeroll from the brunette that Anya doesn’t probe yet.

Anya, the blonde points out as if she's just seeing her friend's point, has a real job. Their landlady would _love_ her.

The brunette catches on at last and looks at Anya with an entirely different assessment, agrees that she might lend an air of authenticity to the group. In turn, Anya would be able to rent a shared room until she finds her way to Paris.

 _If_ she finds her way to Paris, the woman doesn’t say, but Anya’s used to being disbelieved. A rented room is better than the cold pavement under the bridge, so Anya agrees. She wants out of Leningrad - wants out of Russia - but she’s wanted that for a decade. A few days more of wanting won’t hurt her any.

It’s not a few days.

Anya’s caught up in the sensation of shared spaces and three women her own age braiding her hair. They drink vodka and sleep under shared blankets and tease her when she blushes at their crass jokes and it feels … different.

Leningrad feels different than the places she’s stopped before, and for once, Anya thinks she might miss something about it when she leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, follow my writing, edits, and other content at [vampyrekatwrites](http://vampyrekatwrites.tumblr.com/). Follow [nanasalt](http://nanasalt.tumblr.com/) for my _Anastasia_ -specific things. Feel free to PM me or send asks or prompts! I am notoriously bad at replying to comments here, but I love interaction. It's what keeps me writing.


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